Seattle teacher retires after 50 years at same job

By Casey McNerthney, Seattlepi.com, 2011

The final bell rang just after noon Friday, starting a roughly three-month span where sunny days replace long nights working on school essays. Students at Bishop Blanchet, like high school kids across Seattle, were eager to get out.

But instead of rushing from Bill Herber's sixth period P.E. class., students waited around, asking for photos as kids from other classes approached. Several wanted him to sign their yearbook or gym shirt. Most just wanted to hug him goodbye.

On the last day of school, they didn't want to see him go.

For Herber, 74, Friday was the last regular day of a career that started at the same school five decades ago.

He was there to see more than 90 percent of the school's alumni pass through the halls, including 29 from Bishop Blanchet's current staff. In nearly all his classes this spring, he could point to a kid and talk about what it was like to teach one of the student's parents.

"It's not going to be the same without him," said Assistant Principal Chuck Bocian, who was taught by Herber in the late 1960s. "He taught me so much about life."

Herber, a math and freshman boys P.E. teacher, still helped coached Bishop Blanchet's wrestling team that he started more than half century ago. When the P.E. curriculum covered wrestling this year, he still demonstrated some moves.

"Everyone laughed, but he could beat every one of us," freshman Matthew Wong said. "It taught us not to underestimate people."

Herber is a member of the state wrestling coaches hall of fame, and in 1983 coached Kevin Riley, the only Metro League wrestler to win a state title. More than a dozen of his former wrestlers have become coaches.

Herber's academic focus came at the University of Notre Dame where he majored in math, and the University of Washington where he earned a master's degree in P.E. In 1964, he received a second master's in math from the University of Illinois.

He followed his brother to Seattle Prep and spent a year there before enrolling at Bainbridge High, where he played football and baseball. But the most important lessons came during his childhood on Bainbridge Island.

"My mom and my dad really made us realize -- my brother and I -- that everybody was as special as we were," Herber said. "We all have the same needs, the same desires."

Seeing students find fulfillment -- spiritually, in friendships, on the field -- is what kept Herber at Bishop Blanchet. Seeing that develop over generations is a gift, he said.

Herber could retire somewhere sunny, with a golf course far away from school bells. Instead, he hopes to substitute next year.

"I'm impacted by the students just as much as I impact them," he said. "If you're open to it, it's always a two-way street."

Herber, a father of seven, rarely mentions the awards he's received, or that he was among the inaugural members inducted this year into the Bishop Blanchet Sports Hall of Fame. He can't recall win-loss records or how many Metro League titles his athletes won.

What he remembers are stories of students who were struggling and learned to believe in themselves through the help of others.

At an assembly honoring Herber and other departing teachers last month, senior Charley Newman told of the first match he lost as a wrestler.

Newman said he felt anger, shame, embarrassment to lose in front of a room full of his friends and competitors. He barely shook his opponents hand, stormed out, threw his head gear into a wall and wept.

"I was outside maybe five minutes before I heard a door open and Herber was there," Newman told the student body.

The coach knew better than to try and talk at first. He just stood there. And after a few minutes, Newman said, Herber told him it was OK. He made him laugh, and helped him understand that losing the match wasn't such a bad thing.

The wrestler said that in those moments, he understood why people speak so highly of Herber.

"He has that noble quality about him that makes you feel special, let's you know he does care about you," Newman told the school.

The lessons Herber teaches may not resonate immediately, colleague Rick O'Leary said.

"But students take that with them."